Pookie's Privilege
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl oneshot. Daryl finds out that with every title there comes a certain amount of privilege. Just for fun.


**AN: So this was in response to an idea/headcanon that rubyruri on Tumblr posted. I don't know if it's what she (and I'm guessing here, I don't really know if that's the right pronoun, so forgive me if it's not) had in mind, but I just wanted to do it as something a little different and fun for a Saturday night. **

**Please note that, like a lot of my one shots, this really has no real "purpose" other than the pure entertainment value of it. I just hope I did her headcanon some justice. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Some days it was hard not to get bitter about things. Carol probably did, in one day, more laundry by hand than most women did with washing machines in a week before the fall. Somehow she'd become the unanimous "den mother" for a brood of consistently filthy and entirely overgrown children whose thumbs were put on backwards when it came to doing their laundry.

First she had thought that she'd make life easier for herself by introducing the "sorting bins". Given the number of "children" that she had to wash for, they were really just large prison trash bins that she'd labeled with "whites," "colors," and "jeans".

Nothing ever ended up in the bins, though…not a thing. It was impossible, apparently, to pick up your dirty clothes once you'd shucked them and carry them all the way to the room where Carol "stored" the laundry so that she could take it out by the basketful and hand wash it with water that she heated to keep herself from biting through her lip with the sting of plunging her hands into icy cold water at intervals throughout the day, filling all of her time not spent doing other chores with doing the laundry.

Because no one could help do the laundry either. It seemed that even the women in the prison always had "something else" to do and managed to disappear, leaving her like the little red hen, when she went about asking for a little help.

When the bins had failed her, she'd tried for the "personal bins" which were simply trash cans tucked into the corner of each cell. The idea there, of course, was just throw it in and she'd deal with the rest.

But most people couldn't even handle that.

So Carol went every morning, cell to cell, and tried to pick through the almost disgusting cells of most of her companions to find their laundry.

And if washing their dirty underwear wasn't enough to make her days the most exciting days that she could even imagine, then she had to sort the clothes once they were dry. The one thing she refused to do, though, was return them to their owners. She would sort them, and she would pile them in piles on the long table that had once served as a lunch table in her make shift laundry room, but she was not going door to door like the "panty fairy" and delivering her services with a smile to everyone.

Still, delivery aside, the sorting was a pain.

People seemed to forget that just because you knew that this pair of boxers was yours, but that you would never have worn the ones with cats on them, or just because you knew that the pink lace thongs weren't your style, didn't mean that Carol wanted to think that long and hard about the nether regions of all the individuals for whom she was caring.

And so they complained about mix ups, not bothering to look through their pile before they left the laundry room.

Which had lead Carol to do the only thing that she could think to do.

She acquired a good number of cloth strips, cut from clothes worn well beyond their limits, and several packs of permanent markers from a run, and she made labels, just like she was sending all her little ones off to Walker camp for the summer. And, as she gathered their laundry up out of their cells, she proceeded to sew into each and every garment a tag that proudly displayed the name of its owner, thus cutting down, at least in the long run, on the amount of work that she was going to be forced to do.

And she was proud, actually, of her ingenuity, because she was sure that it was going to cut down dramatically on the time that she spent sorting clothes, and the time that she spent listening to people gripe and moan about confusions surrounding their garments.

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"What the hell is this shit?" Merle asked, fingering his way through his pile of clothes on the long table.

Daryl looked over at him, trying to figure out from a glance which one of the piles of clothes might turn out to be his. There were enough "standard" looking clothes that everyone seemed to share that it was next to impossible to tell at a glance if was your pile or not. The only thing that saved them from having to look through _all _the piles was the occasional presence of a lacy thong or a bra that indicated the pile belonged to some woman who had taken full advantage of the Victoria's Secret raid that Maggie had lead about three months before.

"What the hell is what?" Daryl muttered at his brother. "Where the fuck are my clothes?"

"Well…hell…lil' brotha," Merle crooned, sounding somewhat amused now. "Your dumb ass can read, reckon you can find 'em. Look at this shit. Ever' damn thing I own's got this lil' bitty ole piece of somethin' in it says _Merle_ bigger'n shit."

He laughed and Daryl leaned over to see what the hell his brother was going on about. Sure enough, pinched between his fingers, Merle held the waistband of a pair of underwear and tacked into it was a piece of cloth that proudly declared he was the owner of the dingy looking undershorts.

Daryl chuckled to himself.

"What the hell you go an' label ya fuckin' drawers for?" Daryl asked. "I know you ain't scared some damn body's gonna steal nothin' that's been on your nasty ass…skidmarks label what the hell belongs to you."

Merle laughed at that too, looking through his other garments quickly while Daryl turned back.

Michonne's clothes, at a quick glance, looked like his…but he wasn't wearing a red thong. He'd be sure to give her hell about it, but he wasn't wearing it.

"They in all my clothes," Merle marveled. "I didn't do this shit. That mouse musta done it. Done sewed up my clothes all nice and pretty like. Where the fuck are yours?"

Daryl grabbed a shirt off one of the stacks and flipped it to the collar.

"This is Glenn's," he commented. He looked at the item under it, now not as neatly folded as it had been. "All of 'em say Glenn. She's done gone and put labels on everyone's clothes."

And he might have found his pile very quickly now, sorting through them all in a hurry with the newly established system, but Merle found his pile first.

Daryl didn't expect howling laughter from Merle, either, when he located his now clean clothes.

"Looka here! Looka here! This here must be your pile, lil' brotha!" Merle howled. "If I didn't know it from ya nasty ass lookin' drawers…I'da knowed it from the love letter."

Daryl furrowed his brow and reached for what his brother had in his hand, Merle snatching it back with a motion equivalent to what he might have used when they were kids.

"All that's missin' from ya lil' piece is the hearts and flowers," Merle mused.

Daryl located the pile next to Merle's now disheveled lump of laundry and looked at one of the shirts that was there.

The tag on his shirt didn't say _Daryl_ in the same fashion that Merle's had said _Merle, _Glenn's had said _Glenn_, or even Tyreese's had said _Ty_. His tag, and the location of a few garments that he knew to be his beyond a shadow of a doubt confirmed it, proudly displayed _Pookie_ as his name.

And Daryl felt his face burn hot all the way to his ears at his brother's harassment over the name. He didn't even know what it meant or where it came from. He had never asked because Carol only seemed to use at times that he didn't care what she called him because it wasn't ever as important to him as what was actually happening at the time.

But he'd never imagined that Merle was going to find out about the name…he never imagined, after all, that this random name that she'd come up with to call him when they were together was something that anyone else was ever going to know about.

As far as he knew, no one knew anything about them at all.

"Man, shut up! I don't even know that the hell _pookie_ means," Daryl declared, finally getting riled up enough to snatch the garment out of Merle's hands. "Carol's just fuckin' around with me. You know how she does."

Merle laughed harder, if it was possible, and coughed from his own exertions at laughter.

"Hope you choke to damn death," Daryl muttered, only making the laughter continue more as Merle scrambled to grab the rest of Daryl's clothes like he was going to take the pile and show them off or something.

He was an asshole kid about shit like that and he was an asshole adult about it too.

Daryl got his hands on the rest of his clothes, the pile balled up tight against his chest, at about the same time that Merle got a good grasp on the choking laughter that had turned his face bright red.

"Don't be so damn sour!" Merle declared. "Pookie…it's a…well…it's a pet name," Merle stuttered out. "Ya know? Like sugar or…or…hell…honey…"

Merle snorted.

"I mean usually I'm bangin' some broad regular like you bumpin' uglies with mouse, I get some shit like tiger…but pookie's good too," Merle added.

Daryl couldn't even respond. Merle knew that he and Carol were together? How could he even know that? They hadn't told a single soul.

And Merle's face went straight before he curled a lip at his brother in a smirk.

"Hell, Daryl, everybody knows that shit," Merle said, like he could read Daryl's mind. "Who the hell you think put damn WD-40 on ya cot springs…or her damn cot springs where you pretend ya ass ain't sleepin'? These walls don't talk, but they ain't sound proof neither. Hell…we're all damn proud a' ya ass…_Pookie_."

Daryl didn't respond to his brother's slightly altered heckling. He took his clothes and went directly toward the cell that Carol called her own, but where he slept more often than not.

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"You had to know someone was gonna see it!" Daryl protested.

He was sitting on the bed while Carol was putting away his clothes in the drawers that she'd fixed for him, bringing in an extra piece of furniture to wedge against the wall. If everyone was going to know about them anyway, then there wasn't really any need in keeping up the sometimes complicated charade of running back and forth between his perch and her cell after everyone had retired and before they got out of bed in the morning.

Carol turned around and leaned against the piece of furniture that she was working with, swaying purposefully on her feet. She smirked at him.

"Well if everyone would take some responsibility for themselves, yourself included, it wouldn't even be necessary," Carol said. She sucked her teeth then, almost seeming suddenly annoyed at him. "But if it bothers you so much…I won't call you Pookie anymore."

"What the hell's that shit supposed ta mean, anyway?" Daryl asked.

Carol sighed and straightened up.

"It means you're my Pookie," Carol said. "The boxer shorts you wore the very first time you…stayed…with me? They had Pookie the bear on them."

Daryl furrowed his brow at her. They all had a wide array of underwear. One of the raids had brought in basically a king sized box of assorted pairs and they'd been handed out pretty much willy nilly according to size.

"What the hell you talkin' about?" Daryl asked.

"The ones with Garfield on them?" Carol asked. "The orange cat?"

"That's Garfield," Daryl responded.

"And he was hugging Pookie, his teddy bear," Carol said. "I thought they were cute…and then I thought…well, you're my Pookie. You make me feel…safe…and loved…and I love having you around."

Daryl swallowed.

The sentiment was nice enough, but Carol had dropped her tone of voice to a sound that he knew all too well. And it was a sound that he loved to hear. It was the sound that she was feeling especially "friendly" toward him at the moment. It was the time that he was typically most likely to be called "Pookie". And now he knew why…even if it meant that she was equating him to a cartoon bear, he'd take it.

"And," she said, coming over and moving herself to sit facing him, straddling his lap, "I certainly love sleeping with my Pookie."

Carol kissed him then and moaned at the intrusion of his tongue into her mouth. The moan shot straight through him until he felt short of breath when she pulled their mouths apart and sat smiling at him, looking satisfied with herself and smug.

"Merle gave me shit all damn day about it," Daryl said. "Told everyone. All day long, people poppin' up everywhere calling me pookie until I thought some damn Walker was gonna say it."

She put on a mocking frown.

"Sorry Pookie," she commented, rolling her hips to torture him as she slid her fingers through his hair, scratching her nails gently against his scalp. She smiled at him again. "If it bothers you," she said. "I don't have to call you Pookie."

He sighed a little with that relief, his mind turning almost immediately to other relief that he wanted now.

"Thanks," he commented. "Good deal."

But as he moved to kiss her again, she surprised him by sliding backward, finding her feet again, and leaving his lap as quickly and easily as she'd found her seat there. He bit back the desire to whine over it.

"Where you goin'?" He asked.

"What?" Carol asked, turning back like she was going to start folding the damn laundry again.

"What the hell are you doin'?" He asked. "I thought we were gonna…ya know…screw around."

Carol looked at him, furrowed her brows like he was speaking Greek to her, and shook her head slightly.

"I don't think so," she said. "That's Pookie's privilege…and if you're not my Pookie anymore because you can't stand people to know that you are…then…"

She broke off speaking and shrugged. Daryl felt his mind invaded by panic. He shook his head at her and stuttered out.

"I'm ya Pookie!" He declared.

She looked at him again and he nodded at her.

"I am," he said. "I'm Pookie."

She turned full toward him now, hands on her hips suddenly.

"I thought you didn't like it," she said.

"It's growin' on me," Daryl said.

She snorted.

"Seems like it's more about something else growing," she muttered and turned around.

"You really gonna leave me hangin' like that?" Daryl asked to her back. She hummed. "That's low," he said. "Thought I was your Pookie…thought that shit meant somethin'…"

He was flailing now. He knew it. And suddenly he realized that he wasn't a man that was too proud to beg, if it came down to that.

"Besides, you can't take it back now," he continued. "My damn drawers say that shit."

Carol turned around then, abandoning her work with the clothes once more. She pulled the shirt she was wearing over her head and dropped it on the floor right by her feet to collect later, standing there in one of the bras that she was so proud of out of the Victoria's Secret run of Maggie's.

"You _want_ to be Pookie?" Carol asked.

Daryl nodded at her. He'd be pretty much anything she wanted him to be.

"Call me that all day long if you want," he offered. "Hell…call me up to breakfast in the mornin' with it."

She laughed at him and came back to him, wiggling herself into the same position as before and Daryl caught her around the rib cage and turned her around, moving both of them so that he could lay her body against the cot that…now that he thought about it…didn't squeak nearly as much as it once had.

Once he was over her, she wrapped her legs around him, holding him in place, and tangled her fingers in his hair, the light tugging of it sending the same electrical shocks through his body as her kisses had.

She moaned at him again.

"I love you, Pookie," Carol teased when he broke the kiss and pulled away enough to start trying to rid them of some of their extra layers of clothes…all now conveniently labelled in case they couldn't tell what belonged to each of them.

"Love you too, but what am I gonna call you?" He asked. "Huh?"

Carol smiled at him and moved herself enough to lift her hips and start to find her way out of the pants she was wearing.

"I think _ma'am_ will do nicely, Pookie," she said.

Daryl grinned and grabbed the bottom of her pants so that when she lifted her legs he could help her finish the rest of the trip out of them. He tossed them to the floor with the rest for her to find when morning came.

"Yes ma'am," he crooned at her. "Sounds just fine to me."


End file.
